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NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 




NEW YORK: 
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY, 

713 Broadway. 
1874. 



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NEW YORK: 
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY, 

713 Broadway. 
1874. 



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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 

E. P. DuTTON AND COMPANY, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



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THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 



i. 

The civil system of the United States is vitiated by 
the trust that confides high civil function to the needy, 
by the political ignorance of the working class and by in- 
ordinate liberty. The object of this pamphlet is to sub- 
mit to the political philosopher a scheme of civil reform 
corrective of these defects. It consists of three measures : 
1st. The limitation of high civil function to rich gradu- 
ates of universities ; 2d. A political education of the 
working class, sufficient to exclude subversive ideas and 
to qualify the class, at least rudely, for the exercise of 
the franchise ; and 3d. Such an increase of civil power 
as will serve without needless encroachment on individ- 
ual liberty, to exclude unsafe liberty. The first and third 
of these measures are so repugnant to democratic suscep- 
tibility, that it would be absurd to propose them to the 
people at large, or even to the mere statesman, before 
the political philosopher has passed upon them. His ap- 
proval is likely to beget a propaganda which may sooner 
or later enlist a majority of the citizens in their favor. 
Then, and only then, will they be fit for the attention 
and action of the statesman. In so far as civil progress 
is the result of human design, it proceeds from three 



4 THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 

kinds of agencies, viz., that which designs, that which 
propagates, and that which realizes the design. 

It is important to distinguish these three agencies, es- 
pecially the second and third, — 1st, in order to exclude 
the violence incident to premature urgency as regards the 
realization of schemes of political reform ; 2d, to exclude 
the prejudice which such urgency tends to excite against 
sound schemes. The discrimination unfolds a rule of po- 
litical art which, if followed, must relieve society of great 
violence and disorder. It is that the State should ignore 
schemes of radical political reform until it is probable 
that they command the assent of a majority. The corn- 
law league was, as propaganda, the proper precursor of 
the ministerial and legislative action that brought about 
the repeal of the corn-laws. If the temperance society 
in the United States had not precipitated legislation be- 
fore it had secured a majority, it is probable that success 
would, by this time, have crowned its labors. The dis- 
crimination separates the work of the political philos- 
opher from that of the mere statesman. In so far as the 
latter has to do with schemes of radical reform, he has 
to do with only those for which society is ripe ; to put 
others, however sound relatively to a future condition of 
society, as though they immediately concerned the states- 
man, is to put them in a connection in which they seem 
altogether absurd. The indiscriminate contempt into 
which they fall, tends to retard progress by dishonoring 
and discouraging political philosophy, and by postponing 
the realization of the discredited schemes. 

Of the three measures of civil reform now proposed, 
not one is ripe, and only one is nearly ripe for the states- 
man. The project of the political education of the 
working class is backed by such cogent reasons, and the 
school systems of the United States, England, and Ger- 



THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 5 

many affords such obvious facility for at least an experi- 
ment in respect of it, that, to be fit for the attention of 
the statesman, it needs only to become familiar to the 
public mind. As to the first measure, the limitation of 
high civil function to rich graduates of universities, it has 
to vanquish a powerful and obstinate prejudice before it 
can pretend to be an object of attention to the statesman. 
The third measure will not have to encounter so formid- 
able an enemy as the second, but we cannot hope for it a 
veni, vidi, vici campaign. 



II. 

Our civil system proceeds upon the assumption that 
the bulk of men are endowed with the moral temper of 
Cincinnatus, and may be counted on to descend, at the 
summons of duty, from irresponsible power into poverty. 
Those who control the revenues of a state enjoy a power 
that is, to a certain extent, irresponsible, as affording 
them the opportunity of enriching themselves without 
any greater penalty than what is involved in impotent 
suspicion. The assumption contradicts common experi- 
ence which, in giving proverbial currency to the verse, 
" an honest man 's the noblest work of God," agrees with 
the poet, that an honest man is one of the rarest works 
of God. What capitalist of the United States would 
trust his private as he trusts the public property to the 
irresponsible control of needy politicians ? As bankers 
and traders, capitalists confine credit to those who have 
something to lose. As testators they do not indifferently 
appoint rich and poor to be their trustees, but regularly 
prefer the rich. How many of them would go bail to the 
extent of half their property for the average high civil 



THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 

functionary ? Our moral axioms seem to vary according 
as our minds are, or are not, whetted by reference to our 
private' interests, having one theory of the moral nature 
of man when these are concerned, and an opposite one 
when only the public interest is in question. " By their 
fruits ye shall know them." The assumption that arms 
needy men with the power of the state, explains itself in 
such fruits as the " lobby," the system of plunder exem- 
plified by the operations of the Tammany Ring, the com- 
mon opinion that purity in office is exceptional, the de- 
generation of the organ of public opinion manifested by 
public tolerance of the milder forms of official spoliation, 
and which has left only life enough for sporadic reaction 
against acute assaults ; and, finally, so great a success of 
the outside fraud cooperative with official fraud, that it 
tends to glorify sharpness and bring contempt upon the 
ways of honesty. 

It is not a difference as to honesty that makes the rich 
more trustworthy as regards high civil function. Under- 
standing the word honesty to signify impregnable aversion 
to violation of right that has respect to value — neither 
rich nor poor are honest. Honesty, if it exist at all, is 
an extremely rare endowment. What is called common 
honesty is neither a degree, nor a species of honesty. 
Honesty has no degrees. Aut Coesar, aid nihil. A man 
whose respect for the property of others is good against 
ordinary but not extraordinary temptation, is not an 
honest man ; he has his price. Whatever he may have 
of pregnable reluctance to violate right of property, is not 
a degree of honesty. It is indeed a lower degree of the 
aversion of which the highest or impregnable degree is 
what is signified by the name honesty, but it is not a 
degree of honesty. Under the name common honesty, 
we confound with honesty several mental affections, such 



THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PKOGKESS. 7 

as the pregnable reluctance involved in a genuine respect 
for property, the prudence that finds the way of honesty 
expedient, the piety that moves to conform to honesty 
for God's sake. When we dissipate this confusion it is 
obvious that honesty, and indeed its genus virtue, which 
is also differentiated by the attribute, impregnability, are 
extremely rare, and we are obliged to assent to the sinis- 
ter truth that, as a rule, every man has his price. Not 
always a money price, — often a price in power, rank, 
beauty, exemption from threatened disgrace. Take, as 
an example of the confusion that mistakes semblances of 
virtue for virtue, the fact that, quite recently, the British 
patrician practiced bribery at elections. The vice was 
not infamous and therefore not repugnant to his moral 
sense. He would shrink from the infamous vice of tak- 
ing a bribe, but the equally base one of bribing, because 
not yet infamous, was no impediment in the view of his 
moral sense. Clearly, in so far as he is averse to infa- 
mous vice, he is averse not to the vice, but to the infamy. 
It is because aversion to infamy tends to be stronger in the 
rich, and especially in those who have inherited wealth 
(not because the rich are honest), that the former are, 
and the latter are not, trustworthy as regards irresponsible 
power. The importance of honor in comparison of gain, 
is greatly less in the view of the poor than in that of the 
rich. 

Is it not time for society to emerge from the confusion 
that betrays it with mere shows of virtue, and to reform 
its institutions according to the axiom that the bulk of 
men are incapable of virtue ? Nature is not generous to 
man as regards the organic conditions of virtue. Even 
Dr. Newman admits that she sometimes fashions her hu- 
man products so as to foist upon the race the religious 
and moral idiot, — the swine, according to Christ, that 



8 THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 

turn and rend if you offer pearls. It may be that she 
sometimes endows an individual with the conditions of an 
invincible magnanimity ; but the bulk of her human prod- 
ucts are moulded so as to warrant the doctrine of total 
depravity. In vain religion and philosophy evolve a sys- 
tem of morals the practice of which, if universal or even 
general, would make a heaven on earth. A barren and, 
for the most part, a languid approval, is all that the men- 
tal constitution of the bulk of mankind affords to virtue. 
The legend of the Spartan fox implies that Lycurgus 
made no account of honesty as a ground of civil trust, 
bat counted, instead, on the vigilance of the state, the 
citizen's fear of the state, and the sharp-witted prudence 
that prefers to comply with law rather than risk penalty. 
He Avas not of the mind of the sentimentalists, who are 
for making men honest by making believe that they are 
honest. He did not believe that a state could be safeby 
founded on a sham. The sham that men are capable of 
withstanding extraordinary temptation, is the occasion of 
abuse that extends far beyond the sphere of civil func- 
tion ; especially as a pretext for a liberty of intercourse 
of the sexes, which experience is continually proving to 
be dangerous. Public opinion should retrench that lib- 
erty, should hold transgression of the narrowed limits to 
be indecent, and profess, and keep always before society, 
the reason of its caution. Man should continually tell 
himself that he is not to be largely trusted, that there are 
forces in him which are hostile to society, and that society 
and the better part of himself need to be continually on 
the alert against these public enemies. As science dimin- 
ishes the fear of God, public prudence should make the 
state and public opinion more formidable, and by means 
of them, without imposing on humanity a strain it will 
not bear, establish manners that tend to exclude oppor- 



/ 



\ 



THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 9 

tunity of vice. It should rid us of the " benevolism " 
that is rotting the nineteenth century ; and, substituting 
surgery for justice, as reason of severity, cut out the 
rotten parts of society with unlimited charity and an un- 
sparing hand. It should secure, as regards laws and cus- 
toms, a limited dominion to conservatism, proportionately 
subordinating the spirit of innovation, and reducing the 
rate of social change so that society shall, at the end of 
half a century, bear a recognizable likeness to what it 
was at the beginning. It should insist that the individual 
put up with ills that cannot be relieved without radical 
injury to society ; for example, unhappy marriage. Mo- 
nogamy, which is the pillar of the highest civilization, it 
should protect with stern care, even to the degree of for- 
bidding public discussion of the principle. In this in- 
terest it should be iron-handed against erotic godliness 
and the Bohemianism of genius. 

Our political system attracts into public life the sharp- 
witted of the needy class, and, dividing them into oppo- 
site factions, proposes to them office as a spoil and makes 
it an occasion of incessant strife. Those who are in office 
are keenly alive to the fact that they are to enjoy but a 
brief tenure, and have the strongest incentive to make 
the most of their time. What should common sense ex- 
pect from human nature under such circumstances ? The 
needy politician must live by politics. The allowed 
pecuniary reward of a few years' tenure of office, is not 
provision for a life-time. To live honestly by politics 
is simply impossible. No poor man capable of high civil 
function is weak enough to abandon a professional or 
business career for the temporary service of the state 
without seeing his way to a compensation. To leave a 
profession or business for, say four years, is to abandon it. 
One cannot renew his relation to it at the point at which 



10 THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 

he left off. To return is to begin at the beginning, — to 
begin life anew, and with the stigma of instability. Is 
it not a blunder to expect honest legislation and honest 
administration on such conditions ? 

The blunder has the excuse of inadvertency. It is one 
thing to overlook the fact that the conditions exclude fair 
dealing, and quite another to judge, with full advertence, 
that they afford it. We exact no sureties of the poor 
man whom we make President of the United States, 
Secretary of the Treasury, or Postmaster-General, but we 
exact sureties of the same man if we appoint him col- 
lector of a port or of internal revenue, or simple post- 
master. If we make him collector of an important port 
we subject him to the supervision of a naval officer. The 
inconsistency explains that, in so far as the American 
mind is responsible for the admission of the needy to 
high office, it is chargeable only with inadvertency, as hav- 
ing failed to modify, in order to exclude them, the civil 
model given to it by England. According to that model, 
the dignity of high civil function suffers no sign of dis- 
trust of the functionary. Prescription supposed the high 
civil functionary to be patrician, and patrician honor was 
accounted a sufficient guaranty. On the other hand, 
sureties were required of plebeian officials. It did not 
occur to the framers of our Constitution that, in throwing 
open high office to all classes, the country was foregoing 
the important guaranty of wealth and culture. The 
oversight is also partially excused by the habit of the 
time, according to which the poor and uncultivated, as 
a rule, made no pretensions to high office, and it was 
extremely improbable that any considerable number of 
them could emerge from the obscurity of private life. 

Wealth, then, is a sine qua non of fitness for high civil 
function. But wealth without early culture is not a suf- 



THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 11 

ficient guaranty. Men who have acquired wealth by 
sharp practice would not scruple to make a predatory use 
of power that could be safely abused. On the contrary, 
it would seem to them weakness to spare the opportunity. 
Honor has not the value in their eyes that it has in the 
view of those who have acquired wealth by fair dealing, 
or of those who have never known poverty and have 
never been engaged in sordid pursuit. Now it is not 
possible to distinguish, by any general mark, the rich who 
have honestly acquired wealth from those who have ac- 
quired it by sharp practice, and thereby exclude the latter 
from high office. But an obvious mark enables the selec- 
tion of a species of the rich that almost shuts out the 
predatory. This mark is the credential of a university 
degree. Sequestration from sordid pursuit and the hav- 
ing the mind mainly conversant about science, letters, 
religion, and morals, tends to beget a finer sense of honor 
a larger knowlege of moral maxims, a profounder appre- 
ciation of the importance of morality, and a repugnance 
to infamous vice impregnable to ordinary temptation. 
This culture is certified by the University degree. 
Coupled with a satisfactory sign of wealth, such as the 
payment of a certain amount of taxes, it affords ample 
security that the class which it characterizes all but 
excludes the sharper. Accordingly, high civil function 
should be, for the most part, limited to rich graduates 
of universities. Exception should be made as regards 
judicial and high military office, seeing that the ante- 
cedents by which men are prepared for these offices do 
not generally involve or confer wealth ; but the function- 
aries so excepted should be enriched by large life-long 
salaries, as England enriches her judges and law lords. 

Understanding the name patrician to signify a citizen 
whose recent progenitors have for at least two generations 



12 THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 

enjoyed hereditary wealth, — a patrician order balanced 
by a politically educated plebs, affords the best material 
for the organ of high civil function. The English gentry 
has been in this relation to the English plebs since the 
abolition of close boroughs, except that the working-class 
is not politically educated. The majority of the mem- 
bers of the House of Commons are patricians ; and, for 
a good part of the century, English legislation has been 
as democratic as that of the United States, excelling it 
in not being tainted by a suspicion of " lobby " influence. 
Induction is decisive against the patrician as master, but 
of the patrician as servant (civil servant of the people), 
if it venture on such brief experience to pronounce at all, 
it must be in his favor. The superior aptitude of the 
rich graduate of the university is enhanced to the fullest 
degree by the peculiar moral influences that educate the 
patrician. They sequester him not only from sordid oc- 
cupation, but also from those who have undergone its 
lowering influences. In so far as good morals depend on 
good manners, they are indebted to lineage. The spirit, 
habit, or instinct of adaptation to others according to re- 
pect, kindness, simplicity, and modesty, — that sign of 
social puberty, the result of ages of attrition that have 
worn away the angularity and roughness of minds, and 
substituted such. roundness and smoothness that personal 
play and interaction in the movement of life are the 
easiest possible, — proceeds from and is incapable of sub- 
sisting without the patrician. If it be admitted that 
good manners tend to enhance good morals, it must also 
be admitted that, other things being the same, a parlia- 
ment of patricians is more likely to serve its constituents 
loyally than a parliament of plebeians. The advan- 
tage of the wealthy patrician to the state is not con- 
fined to his excellence as high civil functionary. His 



THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 13 

exemption from the temptations that peculiarly beset 
poverty and the pursuit of wealth, together with his 
social ascendency, make him an intolerant and formidable 
censor of dishonesty and its attendant vices. He makes 
public opinion too hot for knavery. Where he is the 
supreme part of the organ of public opinion, the wealthy 
are not free, as in the United States, to proceed openly 
with impunity as public enemies, — to apply without dis- 
guise against society the social apparatus ; for example, 
to make the national distress evinced in an irredeemable 
currency an instrument of open plunder ; to seize upon 
the management of railroads, and, in the view of all the 
world, by devices that baffle law, to rob the stockhold- 
ers ; to work the gold-room and the stock exchange so as 
to let loose a panic. Infamy in such a society paralyzes 
the declared public enemy, whatever his wealth. No 
decent member of society will work for him. Opinion 
frustrates the scoundrel who has sagacity enough to baffle 
the state. The wholesome bearing of the patrician on 
public opinion does not suppose in him the moral im- 
pregnability signified by the name honesty, but only that 
the accidental moral form into which he is moulded by 
his circumstances, and of which opposite circumstances 
might deprive him, involves a. strong repugnance to cer- 
tain violations of right which are, for the most part, 
more leniently regarded by the plebeian. The patrician 
originates, propagates, and maintains an ideal and work- 
ing standard of the state more conformable to dignity 
than what could obtain without him. The state which 
he conducts has majesty. It is incapable of dealing with 
the citizen in the spirit of a huckster, such as is exempli- 
fied by the mean blunder, of imposing on its lower offi- 
cials that they are to be turned adrift with every change 
of administration ; nor does it threaten its creditors by 



14 THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 

entertaining projects of repudiation ; nor does it man- 
ifest a brutal disregard of private interests by suddenly 
upsetting through precipitate legislation an order of 
things on which industry has counted ; nor does it pre- 
fer pecuniary claims against other nations in excess of 
what justice sanctions, nor pocket what it publicly allows 
to be the difference. Public opinion that emanates from 
the patrician abhors and excludes such abuses. It re- 
quires the spirit of the state to be, within certain limits, 
and especially in its dealings with its citizens, large, 
respectful, and humane. 

Christianity attests, and stigmatizes under the name of 
Mammon, the demoralizing influence of the pursuit of 
wealth. It enjoins upon its missionaries to exclude " care 
for the morrow," and leave to their heavenly Father the 
business of providing for their physical wants. It was to 
exempt the priesthood from this influence that the Roman 
Catholic Church imposed celibacy. What celibacy does 
for that priesthood in the way of sequestration from 
Mammon, is done for a secular order, the patrician, by 
the law of entail. Not that the order is wholly exempted 
from provident occupation (an exemption that is neither 
possible nor needful as regards any class or individual), 
but that it is disengaged from the species of provident 
occupation that makes the gain of one man depend upon 
the loss of another. The productive part of industry 
does not put men in obvious antagonism and rouse in 
them competitive fierceness. It is exchange that occa- 
sions industrial enmity, and evolves the demoralizing 
influence to which Christ applied the name Mammon. 
The business of the farmer, manufacturer, and mechanic, 
in so far as it excludes exchange, is not unfavorable to 
religion and morality. Competition is the infernal ele- 
ment of industry, and it is confined to exchange. It ha- 



THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 15 

bituates the heart to apprehend the world as an enemy, life 
as a warfare, benevolence as a weakness, inhumanity as 
moral power. 1 So long as society cannot relieve itself of 
this malignant influence of competition, so long the se- 
questration of a secular, enlightened, and influential order 
from competitive industry, will be an invaluable anti- 
dote. 

To propose to the people of the United States the in- 
stitution of a gentry, would be as reasonable as to propose 
to an escaped lunatic a compromise with his keeper. 
Therefore, although convinced that the patrician is a 
sine qua non of the highest form of democracy, the writer, 
in looking forward to a probable next phase of civil prog- 
ress, does not pretend, as regards the United States, to 
look beyond a point at which the people will recognize 
the indispensableness of wealth and high culture to the 
civil functionary. But better things may be expected of 
Great Britain. She has the happiness to possess a gentry 
that is still intrenched in the affection, respect, and trust 
of the majority of the plebs. This gentry is proving that 
it is the best possible servant of democracy ; and the late 
conservative reaction seems to show that the people are 
not disinclined to accept the evidence. Aversion to so- 
cial inferiority is pusillanimous when it would rather 
put up with a worse condition of society than adopt a 
better, that imposes a social superior. This is not an 
English infirmity. Therefore, in spite of the acceleration 
of the democratic movement in England during the pres- 

1 It rarely happens that a theory totally void of reasonableness obtains with 
any considerable part of mankind. What is common to the theories of commu- 
nism and socialism together with that of liberty, fraternity, equality, may be 
found to involve a sound objection to the order of things that substitute competi- 
tive fierceness for the fraternal spirit. If it were possible for the state (and it 
is by no means obvious that it is impossible) to become the sole merchant and 
retailer of the society, the spirit of competition would be almost extinguished — 
the reicrn of Mammon ended. 



16 THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 

ent century, one may reasonably venture to opine that 
the next phase of civil progress in England will hinge on 
the surpassing aptitude of a gentry for high civil function. 
A renewal of power of entail together with the limitation 
of high civil function to the rich and cultivated, would 
probably suffice to constitute the patrician the helmsman 
of the state. A politically educated working-class taught 
to appreciate the elevating influence of lineage would 
probably, for the most part, prefer him as candidate for 
the House of Commons to the novus homo ; and the House 
being mainly patrician, a discrimination in his favor 
would prefer him for administrative office. The plebeian 
minority in high office would be obliged to adopt the 
spirit of the patrician majority, which would thus be alto- 
gether dominant. 

The patrician element swayed the revolution that be- 
got the United States, and it swayed the conduct of the 
Confederation down to the last war with England, when 
it was overwhelmed by the plebs throughout the North, 
East, and West. It held dominion in the South to the 
end of the civil war, and by leaguing itself with the dem- 
ocratic party of the other sections of the Union, it man- 
aged to bear strongly, though no longer dominantly, on 
the conduct of the Confederation. Venality was not slow 
to proclaim the advent of the plebs ; politics became a 
trade, the state a spoil. Now for the first time was enun- 
ciated as a political dictum, " to the victor belongs the 
spoils," a dictum symptomatic of the decay that was to 
engender the Tammany Ring. A conception of the state 
like that which evolved the spoil policy of Van Buren, 
Marcy, and Jackson, begins to make itself heard in Eng- 
land. One hears of the employments of the state being 
thrown open to all classes, not meaning that all classes 
should be parts of the organ of sovereignty, but that the 



THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 17 

pecuniary benefits of civil employment should be thrown 
open to all. What should we say of a merchant who 
should undertake business with a view to the employ- 
ment of clerks, or modify his business merely to adapt it 
to a lower level of clerical fitness ? Just such a lack of 
wit and dignity would be evinced by a state that should 
busy itself about interests which in comparison of its 
proper objects are so trivial. The fitness of the civil 
functionary is a matter of importance to the state, not 
the class from which he is derived, not whether he be a 
Smith or a Howard, not whether private ambition or pri- 
vate concern about the loaves and fishes be impartially 
satisfied. A state that has eyes for such trivialities is as 
blind to the grand objects that should occupy it, as the fly 
on St. Paul's to the architectural sublime. 

The limitation of high civil function to rich graduates 
of universities is not possible in the new States of the 
Union, these being destitute of a rich and learned class. 
The objection put by the fact applies not against the ex- 
pediency of the limitation, but against the conversion of 
territories into States before they have developed such a 
class. The sign of puberty of a territory should be the 
having a population of at least two millions, and such or 
such a number of citizens who are graduates of universi- 
ties and pay an amount of taxes indicative of wealth. 



III. 

The political ignorance of the mass of the people sub- 
jects it to the erroneous assumption, that inequality as to 
wealth can be conventionally excluded without a greater 
injury to society than what the inequality involves. So 
long as the working-class is without political cohesion and 
2 



18 THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 

Organization, the error is impotent ; but, in proportion 
as the progress of science and art favor the tendency of 
the class to political solidarity, it threatens civilization. 
It is now, all over the civilized world, either eruptive or 
smouldering under the form of communism. 

The end of authority being to prepare people to dis- 
pense with it without injury to themselves or their neigh- 
bors, civil authority should have S3 prepared the plebs ; 
but, on the contrary, it has suffered its ward to acquire 
the thews and sinews of a man with the mind of an in- 
fant ; and communism and the violence of trades-unions 
are the breaking away of the monster from the old con- 
trol. It has already, in constitutional states, usurped an 
independence which it can only abuse. Where it is king, 
the demagogue is mayor of the palace. To compel us to 
give it the mind of a man we are menaced with anarchy. 
The second Empire applied against communism all the 
power of the state, but the evil so thrived under repres- 
sion that in 1871, it was able to strive for empire behind 
the walls of Paris. Argument has proved as unavailing 
against it as civil force. In 1848, a society in France, 
named Association pour la Defense du Travail Nationale, 
undertook to argue down the evil, and to this end en- 
deavored to popularize the able argument of M. Thiers, 
entitled " De la Propriete" The argument is conclusive 
for those who are able to master it, but is inaccessible to 
the working-class. The success of the strike principle 
shows that the class most disposed to communism has 
achieved a higher organic form, and correspondingly 
greater strength. It has wrested thirteen millions ster- 
ling per annum from the employing class of Great Brit- 
ain. The principle is so well grounded in reason and 
equit} r as to have elicited the sanction of two congresses of 
political philosophers, — one in Germany and one in Aus- 



THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 19 

tria. The latter expecting a political advent of the work- 
ing class, has declared that it should be prepared for 
power by a political education. The tendency which, in 
modern times, is manifested by communism, showed itself 
in ancient Rome, under the form of agrarianism. It has 
its roots in human nature, and its action is, in all prob- 
ability, older than history. History is not without evi- 
dence that, in prehistoric time the tendency subverted 
and engendered civil systems ; for example, those of 
ancient Germany and of Sparta. That of Germany ex- 
cluded individual property in land. The land was annu- 
ally divided amongst tribes by whom it was allotted, for 
the year, to individuals, no tribe being allowed to remain 
on the same land two years successively. One of the 
reasons of this remarkable law assigned by the Germans 
to Caesar, was the importance of excluding the discontent 
with which great inequality as to wealth tends to provoke 
the common people. Now the reason presupposes an 
experience by which it was evolved, — an experience of a 
civil system under which individual property generated 
great inequality as to wealth, and a consequent discontent 
that disrupted the state and substituted a new civil form. 
The civil system of Sparta, like that of ancient Germany, 
evinced an aversion to great inequality as to wealth. 
This aversion presupposed a system of the state under 
which an unrestricted operation of the principle of indi- 
vidual property excited an insurrectionary and victorious 
discontent. It is true that neither ancient Germany nor 
Sparta proceeded upon the scheme of communism ; but 
they compromised with the principle of human nature 
that is the matrix of agrarianism, communism, and gener- 
ally of the poor man's aversion to the rich. 

Communism has not made notable progress in Great 
Britain or the United States. In those countries the 



20 THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 

strike movement gives more cause for anxiety. Perhaps 
the success of the strike movement, as one distemper ex- 
cludes another, postpones that of communism, which may 
break oat as virulently as in France or Spain, whenever 
a prolonged distress of the working-class makes room for 
it. But the organic power which trades-unions impart 
to the working-class, if uncontrolled by political knowl- 
edge, is fraught with danger. It tends, and ever with 
more force in proportion to the success of its exactions, on 
the one hand, to diminish the growth of capital, including 
the wages-fund, and, on the other, to stimulate that of 
the class dependent on wages. It tends to diminish the 
growth of capital by diminishing profit, and to stimulate 
the increase of the working-class by the temporary in- 
crease of wages. Higher wages, more marriages, more 
children ; and, beside the increase from the stimulation 
of the principle of population, the class would be aug- 
mented by accessions from the lower stratum of the em- 
ploying class ; for the diminution of profit would cause a 
fall of small capitalists into the working-class. Then, 
the increase of the wages-fund is mainly derived from 
profit. What is contributed from wages by the laborer, is, 
in comparison of what profit contributes, insignificant. It 
is notorious that the advance of wages elicited by strikes 
has not considerably augmented the savings of British 
laborers. To save an excess of wages over the expense of 
a thrifty laborer's subsistence, demands an effort of self- 
denial greatly exceeding what is exerted by a capitalist to 
save the excess of his profit over the expense of living of 
thrifty men of equal fortune. The effort exacted of the 
laborer is one of which but few of any class are capable. 
Capital remaining the same, and the number of laborers 
increasing, wages must ultimately fall. If the exactions 
of trades-unions should go the length of making cost 1 

1 T' o vrcrd cost signifies either : First, what the capitalist parts with as a 



THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 21 

equal to product, or, still worse, of exceeding it, the evil 
would of course be aggravated, and would cumulate and 
break all the sooner. In the latter case, capital must stead- 
ily decrease and laborers augment till starvation, or disease 
begotten of poverty, or an exodus should restore a toler- 
able proportion between wages and those who live by 
them. A knowledge of political economy — such an 
outline knowledge, for example, as Mrs. Fawcett's " Polit- 
ical Economy for Beginners" is intended to impart, — 
diffused amongst the working-class or a part of it, would 
expose to the class the danger towards which it is being 
driven by inordinate exaction. It includes knowledge 
that the greater part of profit returns to laborers in the 
wages-fund, that the parsimony of the capitalist saves for 
them what they had ever failed to save for themselves, 
and that it is an indirect benefit, like the rise of the 
price of food in the beginning of a scarce year, which by 
seasonably pinching the stomachs of the poor, saves them, 
at the end of the year, from starvation. It would show 
them the need of a thrift sufficient to save what they ex- 
tort from the capitalist, and the need of austere precau- 
tion against their arch-enemy the Malthusian principle. 
The strike movement, as was to be expected, has at last 
begotten a counter movement, — a league of capitalists ; 1 
and now we are to see society separate into two opposed 
armies that have to settle by treaty or by violence the 
future relations of capital and labor. Is this event, so 
profoundly affecting the organization of society, an evolu- 

conclition of production (regarding distribution for brevity's sake as a part of 
production) ; or second, what is consumed as a condition of production. I here 
use the word in the former sense. It would be convenient to treat cost as a 
genus, viz., what is parted with as a condition of production, and assign to it as 
species, under the names relative and absolute cost, the two kinds which it now 
equivocally signifies. 

1 Such a league was formed in England a few months since, when the text 
was written, but of late nothing has been heard of it. 



22 THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 

tion or a degeneration ? We may be witnessing the 
birth throes of a new organ consisting of a combination 
of a guild of capitalists and a guild of laborers, whereby 
the relation of labor and capital may, hereafter, be regu- 
larly conventionally and quietly adjusted or we may be wit- 
nessing the beginning of a war that is to subvert civiliza- 
tion. The political enlightenment of the working-class 
cannot but make for the better result. The more the class 
knows of the laws of wealth, the less it will be disposed 
to suicidal exaction. If it can be made to see that, 
within certain limits, capitalists and laborers have a com- 
mon interest ; that profit tends to become an addition to 
wages, that the main reason of the employer's parsimony, 
viz., increase of command over labor, is a reason for add- 
ing his savings to the wages-fund, and that, therefore, 
his parsimony benefits laborers no less than if its saving 
were a saving from wages, the knowledge must tend to 
humble the pretensions of the class and dispose it to 
accommodation. 

The error on which the suicidal exaction of trades- 
unions proceeds, cannot be exposed without a knowledge 
of political economy ; but it is otherwise with that of 
communism. The following brief and plain argument 
suffices to expose this fallacy to a mind provided with no 
more knowledge than the knowledge of human nature 
which common experience imparts to adults of ordinary 
capacity. 

To exclude private property would be to deprive in- 
dustry and parsimony of their main motive, to retrench 
liberty so as to degrade the individual into the condition 
of a slave of societ}^, and to arm tyranny with the greatest 
possible power. Work without an adequate motive is re- 
pugnant. The dependence of one's subsistence and that 
of his family on a given amount of work, determines an 



THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 23 

adequate motive relatively, to that work. Not so a mere 
duty to perform the work. If the duty can be shirked 
without other manifest penalty than uneasiness of con- 
science, it is certain to be generally shirked. Servants of 
inattentive masters who, ignorant of the ordinary stand- 
ard of servants' work, easily put up with less than is due 
to them, tend, as a rule, to a minimum of work. In pro- 
portion as employers are exacting, the standard of work is 
higher. The farmers of the northern part of the United 
States do most of the work on their respective farms, and 
require of their servants a day's work equal to that of the 
master. The standard of farm work in that part of the 
United States, is the highest in the world. In the South- 
ern States, on the contrary, where, when slavery existed, 
the master did not work, the standard was extremely low. 
The tendency of the laborer to leave undone that which 
he can leave undone with impunity, is the rock that wrecks 
so many farming enterprises of men who are ignorant 
what a farm servant owes in the way of work, or who 
have not energy to exact it. Communism, as guaranty- 
ing subsistence and excluding the exacting master, would 
exclude an adequate motive for the quantity of work 
needful to civilization. On the other hand, the guaranty 
of subsistence extinguishes the motive of parsimony. 
Accordingly in a communistic society the minimum of 
production and the maximum of waste would be the rule. 
Each man's tendency in this direction would make him, 
as part of the organ of public opinion, lenient to the ten- 
dency in others. Society would sink into poverty, and 
from its inability to support a learned class, into ignor- 
ance. If not saved by an enlightened despot, it must fall 
into barbarism, and finally into savagery. What havoc 
a scarce year would make in such a society ! The de- 
pendence of the citizen upon the state for his daily food, 



24 THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 

would put liberty at the mercy of the chief magistrate. 
Holding the citizen by the stomach, a temptation, irre- 
sistible to most men, would constantly solicit the magis- 
trate to perpetuate his rule by applying the greatest 
power for tyranny ever possessed by man. A partial 
distribution in favor of the strong would sufficiently in- 
trench him against the bulk of the society. 

If it be possible to impart a knowledge of political 
economy, including the anti-communistic argument, to a 
majority of the males of civilized society, it is possible to 
paralyze communism and to make trades-unions a useful 
social organ. Under a compulsory sj^stem of education, 
including in its curriculum an outline of political economy, 
the employing class, and even the upper stratum of the 
working-class, would, at their own cost, impart the req- 
uisite knowledge to their male youth. To impart it to 
so many of the remaining male youth as, added to those 
independently educated, would ultimately constitute a 
majority of the males of the society, the state or the so- 
ciety might have to bear the burden not only of main- 
taining the requisite schools but also of contributing to 
the support of the scholars. Between the twelfth and 
thirteenth year a mind of ordinary capacity prepared by 
the usual primary instruction, would be fit to receive and 
master an outline of political economy. Three years 
would suffice for the antecedent instruction. Accordingly, 
four years of eleemosynary support and education of the 
complement of male youth needful to make up the de- 
siderated majority, would be the cost to society of smoth- 
ering under a crust of knowledge the Titanic errors 
that threaten to explode it. To develop the desired ma- 
jority, it might be necessary for the United States to feed 
at the public expense for four years, perhaps a third of 
the male youth of the working-class. There is the length 



THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 25 

and breadth of the difficulty. Does it so flagrantly ex- 
ceed the resources of such countries as the United States, 
Great Britain, Germany, Austria, France, that it is not 
worth while to attempt to succor civilization by means of 
it? Private bounty could not be more honorably em- 
ployed than in helping the state to educate the poor ; 
and if all that it now wastes in corrupting society, in be- 
getting and maintaining a lazzaroni, were applied to that 
end, it would probably suffice to maintain at least a moiety 
of the pupils dependent on eleemosynary help. But if it 
were found impossible to maintain at school for four years, 
including the thirteenth, a majority of the male youth, 
society might select and politically educate a sufficient 
number of the youth destined to be its future workmen 
to serve as a propaganda of sound political doctrine to 
the class and as a bulwark against false ideas ; and, by 
means of these, it might secure to conservatism and order 
enough of the working-class to constitute, with employers, 
an overwhelming' majority. To encourage parents to 
cooperate with the state as to the political education of 
their children, privilege and immunity should attach to 
knowledge of political economy. The franchise should 
be limited to men possessing this knowledge, and these 
should be exempt from military service, except when an 
extraordinary levy had exhausted the ignorant class. To 
discourage abuse of the public bounty, citizens independ- 
ently educated and in enjoyment of the franchise, should 
be preferred for state employments and be exempt from 
military service so long as the army could be recruited 
from the class indebted to eleemosynary help. 

It maybe objected that in the thirteenth year the mind 
is not ripe for the reception of political economy. This 
objection must yield to the consideration that the science 
is susceptible of a doctrinal form in which it is relieved of 



26 THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 

abstract dryness and difficulty, and which unfolds its 
principles by means of a series of amusing transactions 
between juvenile students, some taking the role of laborer, 
others that of capitalist, and the transactions being coun- 
terfeits of the real proceedings of both orders. All manner 
of goods would be produced and exchanged. The trans- 
actions would constitute a model of the order of produc- 
tion and distribution, being to these what the orrery is to 
the planetary system. The young student would see the 
part of the goods that go to the capitalist as profits, return 
into the wages-fund, and it would be obvious to him that 
the saving of the capitalists is as much for the benefit of 
laborers as though it were a saving from wages. The 
theory of rent, the theory of money 7 , the theory- of credit, 
would be made manifest to him by transactions to which 
he would be an interested and amused party. This em- 
pirico-doctrinal method is also applicable for the ex- 
posure of the laws that make society, except as to its 
rudest or embryonic form, dependent on civil institutions, 
and for illustrating the advantages and disadvantages of 
the various possible forms of the state. 

The limitation of the franchise to men qualified for its 
exercise by political knowledge, will appear to many to 
be a violation of right. This objection is nullified by a 
correct idea of the nature and genesis of right and duty, 
an idea which the writer presumes will be new to the 
reader. Right is the differentia of the meum and tuum. 
It supposes that something morally belongs to its subject, 
as land, mone} r , liberty, inviolability of life. Right sup- 
poses duty ; for example, if a right have respect to land, 
if it be the moral element of ownership of land, the right 
supposes the possibility of some one being both able and 
subject to temptation to use the land in a way contrary 
to the mind of the owner, and that in case the tempta- 



THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 27 

tion obtains, a recusant volition is due to the owner. If 
a thing be owned by one and in possession of another, the 
right of the owner supposes a duty in the possessor to 
restore the thing when required. Right to liberty sup- 
poses a corresponding duty to respect the liberty. 

The ideas of right and duty are begotten by the bear- 
ing of custom on the mind. Customary measures of lib- 
erty and immunity so affect the mind that an encroach- 
ment upon them is apprehended as culpable. The mind 
is at first morally sensitive only to encroachments on the 
meum ; later it is alive to encroachments of others on the 
tuum. ; in a third phase of development, it apprehends 
with self-reproach the encroachment of its subject on 
the tuum. When the association of ideas, or, as it is 
better named by Sir William Hamilton, redintegration, 
establishes the connection of the moral imperative with 
human welfare, the mind habitually annexes ideas of 
duty to ideas of voluntary actions of a nature to promote 
general happiness. When the idea of God kindles the 
religious spirit, the moral imperative is given as Divine 
command. 

That customary measures of liberty and immunity be- 
get the ideas of right and duty, is proved by the fact 
that the idea of a right to a larger measure of liberty and 
immunity than what he enjoys, never originates in the 
mind of a born slave. The idea of risjht to unaccustomed 
liberty seems to be unattainable even by free men in ad- 
vance of a late phase of civilization. On the other hand, 
slaves apprehend as violation any encroachment upon 
their customary liberty and immunity. Moreover cus- 
tom is the recognized ground of what is termed prescrip- 
tive right. 

A right supposes power in the subject of the correl- 
ative duty to obey the duty. One has no right to life 



28 THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 

against the tiger he encounters in the desert, nor against 
a madman, because the tiger and the madman are desti- 
tute of power to obey duty. Power to obey duty sup- 
poses a sentiment of duty. Without an idea of duty in- 
volved in a sentiment, obedience to duty would not be 
possible. Given a society consisting of only two persons, 
neither has a right but what is made by, and is constantly 
dependent on, a correlative sentiment of duty in the 
other ; for, without such a sentiment to give the idea of 
doing or forbearing according to the right, there could be 
no volition obedient to the correlative duty ; and the idea 
of a right which no one has power to respect, is as ab- 
surd as the idea of a right to life against the walls of a 
well into which one has fallen. If one of a society of 
three apprehend himself as having a certain right, and 
another apprehend him, in a correlative sentiment of 
duty, as having such a right ; and if the two have power 
to cause the putative right to be respected, then, though 
the third be destitute of a sentiment of duty relative to 
the putative right, the right exists ; it is determined by 
the efficient correlative sentiment of duty. Many mem- 
bers of society are moral idiots ; they are altogether des- 
titute of the sentiment of duty ; but their moral idiotcy 
excludes no right, the rights of all the members of the 
society being determined by the efficient moral sentiment 
of the bulk of the society. The erroneous assumption 
that right is independent of efficient sentiment, caused 
the collision of law and conscience in the United States, 
from which emerged the idea of a " higher law." The 
evil of slavery had become manifest to many humane 
and ardent minds. These coalesced into the party 
known as abolitionists. The abolitionists apprehended 
slavery not merely as an evil, but as a violation of right ; 
and they held it to be their duty, not only to propagate 



THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 29 

their abhorrence of the institution, but also to violate 
the law of the country by inciting and helping slaves 
to escape from their masters. To this erroneous moral 
imperative, Mr. Seward gave the name of " higher law." 
If the abolitionists had discerned the dependence of right 
on an efficient sentiment of duty, they would not have 
regarded the slave as having a right to freedom and them- 
selves as under an obligation to assist him to liberty in 
violation of law. They would have felt themselves 
bound to endeavor to propagate their moral abhorrence 
of slavery until they should excite an efficient moral sen- 
timent in favor of liberty. The sentiment, armed with 
the needful power, would constitute a right to liberty ; 
and then, and only then, it would be time to insist on 
abolition. The moral order is, in such cases, the way of 
peace, reformers restricting themselves to propaganclism 
till they excite an efficient sentiment of duty, and then 
politically and legally applying the power they have en- 
gendered. Philanthropy is a nuisance so long as it is 
irritated by the error that rights are independent of the 
moral sentiment of society. Conscience makes it insubor- 
dinate. In advancing societies there is a progress as to 
moral ideas which, every now and then, brings to light 
some moral repugnancy in the form of the state or in the 
laws ; and if, on every such occasion, philanthropy must 
needs be insurrectionary in the name of a " higher law," 
it would domesticate anarchy. 

To allow the dependence of rights on the moral senti- 
ment of society, is to be disabused of the notion that 
rights are essential to the human individual and are older 
than society, that sooiety, like a confederation of states, 
is the creature of a contract made between sovereign 
parties. Considered from the moral stand-point, the de- 
pendence of the individual on society is at first unlimited. 



30 THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 

In the rudest state of society there is no sentiment of 
duty, and there are no rights ; and, indeed, in view of 
the fact that the human individual is the product of 
society, that, as infant, his dependence upon it is ex- 
treme, and that, as adult, he owes to it the development 
of all his faculties, it is not to the honor of the human 
intellect that the idea of society as being the creature of 
a contract made between sovereigns, could have mastered 
the faith of a considerable part of mankind. 

Seeing that rights are the offspring of the moral senti- 
ment of society, men have no right to suffrage except it 
be conferred by that sentiment. To give an individual 
the franchise, is to make him a part of the organ of sover- 
eignty, — the organ that has for function the regulation 
of society. This, if the individual be politically ignorant, 
is to set him to do what he is incapable of doing, as 
though peasants should be set to make watches. Moral 
sentiment repudiates such an absurdity, and therefore 
determines no right in the politically ignorant to meddle 
with the business of the state. 



IV. 

The state is but a means ; its end is the happiness and 
dignity of the human individual. But while it subserves 
it also retrenches the happiness and dignity of the citizen. 
It does this by retrenching his liberty. If it exclude all 
liberty, it excludes all dignity and all that deserves the 
name of happiness. If it allow a certain excess of liberty, 
it gives room for disorder that tends to become anarchy. 
What then is the conterminus of civil power and safe 
liberty ? Let us look for a sign of it to the exigencies to 
which civil power corresponds. 



THE KEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 31 

The protection of person and property against persons, 
is the characteristic function of the state. The protec- 
tion of person and property against the elements, as by 
the construction and working of light-houses, the im- 
provement of harbors and of internal navigation, may, 
notwithstanding its great importance, be classed as one 
of the extraordinary functions of the state ; to which 
class belongs also the relief of indigence, sanitary meas- 
ures, colonization, the extension of commerce, the pro- 
motion of science and art. To protect person and prop- 
erty against persons, it is necessary to apply preventive 
measures as well as measures of redress. Prevention is 
the reason of an encroachment of characteristic civil 
function on liberty that seems to many political philoso- 
phers to be inexpedient as Avell as derogatory to the dig- 
nity of the citizen. Extraordinary civil function does 
not, as a rule, encroach on liberty, at least not directly 
nor obviously. Accordingly our question does not impli- 
cate that of the expediency of extraordinary civil func- 
tion ; it has to do with no civil power but that which lias 
respect to characteristic civil function and especially to 
the preventive part of it. 

The power of the state to protect person and property 
against persons, is in proportion to its knowledge of the 
callings, domiciles, movements, character, etc., of all per- 
sons within its domain. If it be not all-seeing in respect 
of these, murder, treason, theft, fraud, are tempted and 
helped by opportunity. If the society be suffered to grow 
so as to press severely against the limit of subsistence, the 
working-class is plunged into extreme poverty consti- 
tuting a powerful incentive to violation of property and 
person. Extreme poverty tends to suspend the moral 
imperative in respect of those whose indifference insults 
it. Why should not the despised pauper prey upon them 



32 THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 

as they prey upon animals of a different species ? Sym- 
pathy is the ground, the sine qua non of moral sentiment, 
and, therefore of right and duty. But if the contempt 
of indifference be in place of sympathy, the ground of 
obligation is, in the view of the sufferer, wanting. It is 
to the weakness, not to the conscience of the pauper that 
society owes whatever of impunity it enjoys from the de- 
moralizing tendency of pauperism. The governing classes 
are so familiar with the exterior of extreme poverty, they 
have so little experience of the torment it involves, and 
its causes appear to be so hopelessly beyond human con- 
trol, that these classes seem to themselves to be exempt 
from responsibility in regard to it ; and they view it as a 
hardship that human fortitude can very well endure. In 
the view of the benevolent who know its intensity, it 
were better that man were annihilated than that extreme 
poverty should measure the earthly life of the race. 
Viewed from the middle between these extremes, the 
evil appears so great that, to the humane heart, its ex- 
clusion would be cheaply purchased by a considerable 
sacrifice of liberty. 

It is only at such a cost of liberty that the state can 
acquire the knowledge necessary for the prevention of 
crime against person and property, and for the exclusion 
of extreme poverty. Its eye should be on every citizen 
from his birth, and upon every foreigner that enters its 
domain. It should know the calling and property of 
every citizen. Every change of domicile should be known 
to it, and the occupants of every house. Travellers should 
be an object of peculiar vigilance. Vagabondage should 
not be tolerated. No citizen should be allowed to attain 
to man's estate without being qualified, or being in the 
way of being qualified, to give society a quid pro quo as 
regards his maintenance, except the maintenance be oth- 



THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 33 

erwise guaranteed. The poor, unqualified to earn their 
bread, should be treated as a class dangerous to society. 
The state should have power to apply them to the ac- 
quisition of some industrial art, and should have control 
of them till they repay the expense of teaching them. 

English liberty cradled the International and built and 
let loose the Alabama. It is a standing menace to other 
nations and to civilization at home and abroad. Never 
had nations a better casus-belli than what the universal 
aggressiveness of English liberty affords. Liberty in the 
United States is at this moment aiding and abetting 
Cuba to throw off the Spanish yoke. The reaction 
against civil authority has begotten a fanatical optimism 
in respect to liberty. Human nature, forsooth, needs only 
unlimited freedom to develop civil perfection. Therefore 
we should allow unlimited freedom of discussion and or- 
ganization. A Paris and a Cartagena commune must be 
free to organize itself in London. Nascent progress is al- 
ways odious to the majorit}^ and would be stifled by the 
prejudice if it were not protected by the right of free 
discussion. No matter how violent the change proposed, 
— no matter how revolting and corrupting, nay even 
though it be the conversion of all women into strum- 
pets, — it is to be freely mooted and discussed, and suf- 
fered to organize itself, because it is presumable that, 
owing to the selectiveness of liberty, nothing but what is 
good can survive free discussion. Liberty is the way, the 
truth, and the life ! 

It is more than time to suppress this superstition. In 
communism it has already raised a devil most difficult if 
not impossible to lay. There is no such high-road to social 
perfection as the fanatics of liberty imagine. We have 
to grope our way in the dark, and not improbably over 
ground which it would not be encouraging to see. We 

3 



84 THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 

should be tenacious of solid footing till experiment has 
assured us that we can trust our weight on new ground. 
We should not trust wholly either in liberty or in con- 
servatism, but in so much of both as induction sanctions. 
We should hold to our moral principles as though we 
were morally infallible ; at least to those of them in re- 
spect of which a majority of the society are unanimous, 
and we should forbid public discussion of any scheme of 
innovation which they condemn. In such free states as 
England and the United States, men are so besotted by 
excessive liberty, that it seems to them not too dearly 
purchased at the cost of the crime, poverty, and anarchical 
tendency for which it is responsible. The prejudice would 
vanish before the light of political knowledge. A sov- 
ereign people knowing the reason of the limitation of safe 
liberty, would know how to put up with self-imposed re- 
straints, without which order and prosperity are impos- 
sible. According to experience, men easily put up with 
retrenchment of liberty, when equity, backed by power, 
requires it. As a rule, even the rude in crowds sponta- 
taneously forego an incommodious liberty. When cir- 
cumstances have brought home to the plebs the impor- 
tance of strong government, it has known how to submit ; 
for example, lately in the United States, during the civil 
war, to put up with the usurpation of illegal and dan- 
gerous power by the executive. They who most insist 
on largest liberty, are they who know least of the con- 
stitution and circumstances of human nature that make 
human welfare dependent on strong government. Sup- 
plant the ignorance, and the intolerance will disappear 
with it. 

The aversion of the plebs to strong government is ag- 
gravated by an error that is easily dissipated, an error 
that confounds strong government with civil authority. 



THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 35 

The plebs begins as infant. During its infancy civil 
authority and power are at their maximum. According 
as the plebs is matured by civilization, it grows impatient 
of the too-much of civil restraint. A struggle ensues, 
the plebeian striving in the name of liberty, and the 
authority in the name of God. During the struggle the 
war upon authority is necessarily a war upon strong gov- 
ernment ; and when the plebs, as is inevitable amongst 
the higher races, emancipates itself from tutelage, it con- 
tinues to regard strong government with a hostile eye, as 
though it involved civil authority and were incompatible 
with democracy. But the error has no root. A plebs 
that is almost warranted, as in England or the United 
States, to say of itself, Vetat, c'est moi, has no ineradica- 
ble reason of aversion to strong government. If it could 
see its way to a strong civil system adequately guaranteed 
against abuse by the civil functionary, and if this system 
appeared to it to be the most expedient as regards the 
prosperity of society, there is nothing in history to war- 
rant the belief that it would not adopt the system. But 
the addiction of the Anglo-Saxon to the principle of lais- 
sez faire, determines a better founded repugnance to the 
proposed increase of civil power. He distrusts the med- 
dling of human contrivance with civil growth, expecting 
all amelioration from the spontaneity of nature, and dis- 
posed to think that human interference with deep-seated 
social evil is more likely to aggravate than to improve. 
This, combined with impatience of civil control, and ap- 
parently justified by the failure of so many political pre- 
scriptions, gives to the prejudice in favor of unsafe liberty 
a stronghold which, though not impregnable, is capable 
of standing a Trojan siege. The civilized world is of 
late in a state of neophobia. It stigmatizes eveiy novelty 
that pretends to be a measure for the amelioration of 



36 THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 

society with the name of Utopia. True it has been often 
the dupe of philanthropic invention, and is unceasingly 
pestered by a swarm of vain schemes of social experi- 
ment. This experience, however, should teach it not in- 
tolerance, but discrimination. Every human faculty errs, 
and the highest, Reason, misses more frequently than it 
hits the truth. Midway between such extremes as in- 
tolerance of novelty and a credulous susceptibility to 
novelty is the zone of wisdom. Progress is ever demand- 
ing of us the invention and application of new means, 
and our faculty has not been found unequal to the de- 
mand. 

Redundancy of population threatens to become the most 
formidable of the exigencies that demand strong govern- 
ment. Until a dense population covers the habitable 
globe, we are exempt from the necessity to find a final 
solution of the Malthusian problem. Meantime, pressure 
against the limit of subsistence may be relieved by emi- 
gration. It tends to relieve itself in this way spontane- 
ously, but not amply, steadily, nor in the way most 
favorable to the society relieved. The relief is ample 
when it raises wages so that thrifty workmen can decently 
maintain their families and have something to spare. It 
is favorable to the society relieved when it detaches those 
who are most likely to succumb in the struggle for sub- 
sistence, whereas the abler and more enterprising of the 
working-class are detached by spontaneous emigration. 
If the state were empowered to prevent the increase of 
population beyond a given number by means of compul- 
sory emigration, an easy condition of the working-class 
would be constantly or at least with little interruption, 
maintained, and the society might be steadily disem- 
barrassed of those who would be most likely to become a 
burden. It might select for expatriation the able-bodied 



•v 



THE NEXT PHASE OE CIVIL PROGRESS. 6( 

pauper of sound mind, including all those who had been 
at any time helped by public bounty, excepting persons 
who should purchase exemption by an amount equal to 
the cost of transporting an emigrant. Colonial land 
might be allotted to emigrants on condition of their set- 
tling on and cultivating the allotment, and the land 
might be subjected to a permanent tax varying, within 
certain limits, with the value, the tax to be applied to 
defray the cost of emigration. Other moderate taxes 
might be levied on the colonists, to be applied in the 
same way. The colony, it will be said, would throw off 
this burden when it acquired sufficient strength. The 
act would be dishonest, ungrateful, impious, and as impru- 
dent as immoral. All rights of property obtaining in 
the colony would obtain in subordination to the end for 
which the colony was founded, and it would be sheer 
robbery to despoil the mother-country of the property 
reserved by her, for carrying out that end. The moral 
reason would be inefficient if it were unarmed ; but the 
mother-country would defend her right. Besides, the 
colony would be as much interested to have its popula- 
tion augmented as the mother-country to have its popu- 
lation diminished ; so that the tax would be applied for 
the promotion of a common interest. Prudence, therefore, 
would concur with duty in disposing the colony to endure 
the tax and to preserve a filial relation to the mother- 
country until population should become of a certain den 
sity, which would signify the puberty of the colony, and, 
therein, the termination of its legitimate dependence on 
the mother-country. All colonizing countries would be 
interested to make common cause against an insurrec- 
tionary colony that had no better reason for rebellion 
than a sordid one. The selection for compulsory emigra- 
tion of beneficiaries of public bounty would benefit all 



38 THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 

parties concerned. It would relieve the mother-country 
of partial, total, or imminent pauperism, and the wages 
class of severe competition, and would remove the weaker 
part of the class to a more remunerative field of employ- 
ment. It would also tend to check abuse of public 
bounty, by making the beneficiary liable to compulsory 
emigration. 

The great obstacle to the relief of redundancy of pop- 
ulation by colonization, is that town industry, and es- 
pecially that which produces luxuries, is for the most part 
out of place in colonies. This obstacle testifies, not that 
the state should not meddle with emigration, but that it 
should look to and regulate the proportion between agri- 
cultural and town industry. Jefferson says of great 
towns that they are great sores on the body politic. 
Paris is a notorious example, and the complicity of the 
lower order of the citizens of New York with the Tam- 
many Ring is even a better though a less conspicuous 
specimen. But the political danger incident to great 
towns is even less than the economical danger. Redun- 
dancy of the wages class dependent upon agricultural in- 
dustry can be relieved by emigration, but not so redun- 
dancy of the wages class dependent on town-industry. 
The poverty and habit of colonies exclude a considerable 
demand for the labor and skill of the latter class ; and 
the inconsiderable demand can be more cheaply satisfied 
from abroad. According as the proportion of town in- 
dustry augments, irredeemable distress augments. In 
densely populated countries the evil is accelerative. The 
low cost and price consequent on the low wages, tend to 
extend the foreign market for town products. This en- 
ables and causes an increase of the wages class, the agri- 
cultural portion remaining the same or but slightly in- 
creasing, while the bulk of the additional number engages 



THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 39 

in town industry. After a time the increase of the wages 
class further reduces wages, cost, and price, and augments 
the foreign market, increasing the excess of population 
over what domestic agriculture can maintain ; and it in- 
creases the number unfit for emigration. Another danger 
to countries having a much greater population than what 
their agriculture can feed, is that they are at the mercy of 
every interruption to commerce. The}^ are sensitive to 
all the ills that affect their foreign markets. It is true 
that they are more powerful, better able, as having more 
men and money, to gratify national ambition. They are 
better able to sway the policy of other nations, to pre- 
serve their independence, and to make the rest of the 
world convenient to them. It may be expedient to risk 
the danger of extraordinary town population for the sake 
of these benefits ; but surely no attention has been 
hitherto bestowed upon the question that warrants such 
a conclusion. If society after due consideration, should 
conclude that it is better not to interfere with the in- 
crease of town population, it would not, in the worst 
sense, drift into the dangerous extremity. It would 
willingly incur the danger. If it concluded otherwise, it 
would have no reasonable alternative but to arm the state 
with power to arrest the inordinate growth of towns. 

Such are the exigencies that call for a retrenchment of 
liberty in constitutional states. Do they expose the con- 
terminus for which we are looking ? No ; there are no 
general marks significant of the limit. But there is a 
method instead by which each societ} 7 may practically 
though not theoretically, ascertain and keep itself oscilla- 
ting in a narrow range within which the limit lies. The 
method proceeds on such a complex of incommunicable 
knowledge and of instinctive aptitude as constitutes the 
skill that precedes and generates art ; such, for example, 



40 THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 

as enables the slinger to hit the mark, or a person in mo- 
tion to elude collision at the intersection of his direction 
and that of another moving body. This method gives to 
the state a power that is not to be fully exercised except 
in extremity, with the understanding that the civil func- 
tionary is to employ no more of it than what is indispen- 
sable for the due conduct of the society. To this it will 
be objected that the functionary would not have respect to 
the interest of liberty, and that the indefiniteness of his 
obligation in regard of it would tempt, elicit, and protect 
a regular abuse of power. Police administration, in con- 
stitutional states, disproves the objection. It is every- 
where applied so as to be inoffensive to the class that, as a 
rule, gives no occasion for its interference. This, no doubt, 
is owing to the peculiar sensitiveness of society to police in- 
terference ; and it is not to be inferred that civil power in 
other departments wherein it is not in contact with and re- 
strained by a like sensitiveness, would be exercised, in the 
absence of any equivalent restraint, with like deference to 
liberty. But it is possible to apply an equivalent restraint, 
1st, by generating and maintaining, through the political 
education of the people, a public opinion that bears un- 
comfortably on the citizen who manifests indifference to 
the danger of civil encroachments ; and 2d, by the ap- 
pointment of prosecuting and judicial officers for the pro- 
tection of liberty against civil functionaries. The sinecur- 
ism of the demos is the arch-enemy of democracy. It likes 
the honor, but not the trouble of " kinging." To prevent 
this indolence, Athens decreed that every citizen must 
take part with one faction or another. A people whose 
emotive nature does not afford a basis for such a jealous 
and active love of liberty as the proposed political educa- 
tion should aim at exciting, is either altogether incapable 
of, or not yet ripe for, a more advanced civil form ; but it 



THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 41 

is probable that, in view of the collapse of liberty and 
decay of civilization heretofore caused by popular indif- 
ference to encroaching civil power, the peoples of the 
United States, England, Germany, and France, enlight- 
ened by a political education, will evolve a sufficiently 
jealous, vigilant, and reactive patriotism. Stimulated 
and supported by this spirit, the civil guardians of lib- 
erty would be likely to hold in check the encroaching 
tendency of civil power, and to keep it near the desired 
conterminus. To this end, the police should be a body 
prepared by something more than the common education 
for the nice exercise of discretion, and for this they 
should be held responsible. 



V. 

A state of the proposed pattern is a democracy, as hav- 
ing for sovereign the unanimous majority of all the adult 
citizens intellectually competent to exercise suffrage. It 
is a limited democracy because of the disqualification of 
the needy and of the rich who are not graduates of uni- 
versities for high civil function. It maybe either a dem- 
ocratic republic, or what is badly termed a constitutional 
monarchy ; in other words, either an elective chief -mag- 
istracy, as in the United States, or as in England, a hered- 
itary nominal chief -magistracy . The misnomer consti- 
tutional monarchy obscures the relation to democracy and 
the excellent conveniency to liberty of hereditary fictitious 
chief-magistrac}^. The head of the state is not in any 
respect sovereign. It is quite safe to affirm of him that 
he can do no wrong, seeing ^that his impotence secures his 
impeccability. His prime minister is the real chief mag- 
istrate. He himself has more than the honor but none of 



42 THE NEXT PHASE OF CIVIL PROGRESS. 

the power of magistracy. But though not a sovereign, he 
is the symbol of the power and dignity of the state, and a 
symbol of great utility, as absorbing and nullifying that 
dangerous excess of honor, which, when concentrated 
upon an able servant of the state tends to convert him 
into a despot. Ambition is more securely harnessed when 
the high officers of the state are universally and habit- 
ually viewed, and habitually apprehend themselves, as 
subjects and servants of an individual; — one so easily 
loses sight of such an abstract master as the state ! More- 
over, hereditary nominal chief-magistracy is more conven- 
ient to liberty than elective chief-magistracy, as affording, 
in the facility of deposing a minister or a parliament, a 
readier expression of the mind of the majority. It has 
also the advantage of excluding the frequent agitation of 
society for the satisfaction of private ambition. 

The prerogative that gives England its House of Lords 
is a mere accident of fictitious hereditary chief-magistracy. 
To propose it to a democratic republic as an ameliorative 
limit, would be but little more absurd than to propose its 
abolition in England. It is objectionable as saddling the 
bulk of society with a merely conventional superiority. 
Human pride can easily put up with a superiority that 
is inevitable, or that atones by its utility, such as that of a 
gentry ; but reason protests against tolerance of a merely 
conventional superiority that is neither inevitable nor of 
compensating utility. On the other hand, the prerogative 
has worked well in England, and no one is able to foresee 
what damage to the state its abolition in that country 
might cause. " Heredity " is by no means of itself a se- 
lective principle as regards the intellectual and moral 
aptitudes required in a legislator, but as applied to what 
may be termed the nutrition of the House of Lords, it 
operates selectively. It selects those who in respect of 



THE NEXT PHASE OK CIVIL PROGRESS. 4'6 

opulence, instruction, and refinement, give the best guar- 
antees of good conduct, and, within the organ which it 
aliments, there forms another organ, the working House 
of Lords, which consists of the able portion of the he- 
reditary peers and of the law lords, and which experience 
has proved to be efficient. No political philosopher wor- 
thy of the name would be for incurring, in order to re- 
move a merely sentimental grievance, the unforeseeable 
consequences of the suppression of an institution so sanc- 
tioned by experience. 



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